Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

six teenagers had come across another group of six who were kicking a ball in Buttery Park in the early evening. A witness walking her dog said a game blossomed, then wilted when one kid slide-tackled another. The two fought like alley cats, which she found somewhat amusing until a blade appeared. Twenty seconds later, all but one of the tearaways scattered to the winds. Eighteen minutes after that, the remaining boy, Mick Turton, was in an ambulance, bleeding from two holes in his chest. He bellowed for revenge as the ambulance zipped out of the park, cried for his mother as it blasted down the road, and gave up inhaling as it turned into the hospital grounds. Major Investigation Team 3’s hotline buzzed soon after.

But for four days, they had nothing, until a lucky break.

Twelve teenagers, one clear witness, a wide, open park, but the team hit a brick wall, and stayed there with their noses pressed against it for ten days, until a blind piece of luck dropped in their laps. A mile from Buttery Park, an old man hit triple nine because a neighbour’s kid had busted his window with a football. When the old guy refused to hand back the ball, the kid’s dad took a corn-on-the-cob fork to his car tyres. While mediating between the two men, one of the police officers saw blood on the football and remembered the Buttery Park incident.

Off went the blood for testing. Back it came as Mick Turton’s. The ball went next and gave up a fingerprint. It belonged to a sixteen-year-old petty drug dealer known as Don The Man. Don The Man had been arrested many times, so high respect for the police’s investigative powers must have been the reason why he reported his ball stolen on the same day a kid got knifed. In his garden one moment, gone the next. But Don was all for helping the police and the stabbed boy’s family get justice: ‘Killer must have lobbed the ball into someone’s garden when he legged it. You can keep it for more tests and shit.’

Because they weren’t born yesterday, Bennet’s team had obtained records of Don’s contract phone’s whereabouts on the night of the stabbing. At the important time, the device was in the vicinity of Buttery Park. Don The Man’s explanation: ‘Shit, man, I was so pissed about my ball, I forgot to report my phone got nicked as well.’ His alibi for the time of the attack? At his girl’s house, watching news about the ongoing Australian bushfires. He even quoted lines from the newscasters, as if that was proof (‘Shows I didn’t just watch some earlier news programme, eh?’). The girlfriend, sixteen-year-old Erica Smith, had backed him up (‘So, what, you peelers saying I’m lying as well?’). The Man’s abrasive mother moaned that her son had asked his girlfriend to marry him a couple of weeks ago, and why would someone who’s planning a wedding go out and kill someone? (‘He’d have to be mad, wouldn’t he? You saying my son is mad?’)

But in terms of real evidence, they had nothing. Don’s mother and Erica and all his cronies remembered the ball and the phone getting stolen, and would swear it in court. The only decent piece of CCTV showed a figure in what appeared to be bloodstained clothing and carrying a football running past a shop near the park, but a Crown Prosecution Service lawyer who’d viewed it said the ball might not be a ball, the bloodstains might not be blood, and the figure looked too fat to be Don The Man. Many had witnessed teenagers fleeing along streets and down alleys, but no one had managed to identify anyone, so none had been traced. No DNA or other fingerprints had been found at vital spots at the scene or on Mick Turton’s clothing or body.

Bennet’s team talked to Don The Man’s crew, but they knew nothing about a football game: they’d all been hanging out in a friend’s house, miles away from Buttery Park. By weird coincidence, on that very evening they’d given all their phones to a pal to carry in a bag, and hadn’t the idiot gone and left it on top of his car. All missing and now dead. And none of them could supply phone numbers, so tracing these unregistered devices was looking like a bust. Likewise, Erica, the girlfriend, had an unregistered phone and apparently broke and tossed it on the same night, and, lo and behold, not a single one of her friends or family knew that number or had it stored in their own devices. A highly unlikely set of circumstances, but CPS lawyers only gambled on dead certs.

Yesterday had almost provided a breakthrough. A female with a voice disguised by helium, believe it or not, had called to say she had proof of who killed the boy in the park, and would call back. She hadn’t yet. The call had been traced to a phone box in Darnall, but it was on a busy main road, which meant anyone could have used it. No CCTV covered the phone box. Witnesses were being traced.

Don The Man’s custody clock had expired and he’d been released, and for almost two weeks the case had vented heat like a joint of cooked beef left out in December wind. The team was disheartened. Losing a suspect was worse than never finding one in the first place.

The detective up front of the incident room finished his outline of the Darnall phone call trace and took his seat. Someone else stood to give her updates. Bennet found himself restless, but not because of the stale smell of the investigation.

He was still thinking about Joe’s mother, Lorraine.

3

Later that night, asleep on the sofa, Bennet woke to find his son rooting through his coat, which was hanging on the back of the nearby armchair. In the light from the TV’s screen saver, he watched the ten-year-old slip out